The Amarna tablets record a correspondence in the mid-fourteenth century B.C. over a period of about 20 years. The Canaanite leaders were writing to the Pharaoh for help in difficult issues they were facing. One of those difficulties was that a people called apiru were taking over the land. The king of Gezer wrote, “so may the king, my lord, save his land from the power of the apiru” (EA271). The king of Jerusalem recorded that, “the war against me is severe… apiru has plundered all the lands of the king… if there are no archers, lost are the lands of the king” (EA286). Some have suggested that the apiru are actually the Hebrews, or Israelites. What are the arguments for and against this idea?
Michael C. Astour in “The Hapiru in the Amarna Texts: Basic Points of Controversy,” writes:
“[T]hey were…semi-nomads in the process of sedentarization, who came from the semi-desert zone and entered civilized regions as strangers….they were members of tightly knit tribal units whose allegiance was determined by kinship and who had their own system of law… [Apiru] acted in large armed units which were not only engaged in plundering raids but were also seizing for themselves towns and parts of the lands under Egyptian rule” (p. 41, 31).
This sounds an awful lot like the Israelites when they went into Canaan to settle the land. The term apiru had been used long before the Hebrews came into the land, however, as early as 2000-1750 B.C. What many scholars have suggested is that the term does not describe one people, but a type of people. Nomadic invaders may have been called Apiru all throughout the Near East by those who were outside of the group. While some scholars have suggested that they were tight tribes with a common culture, others have suggested that they were simply lower class elements of society with no common affiliation other than being outcasts and/or criminals.
Eugene H. Merrill, in his book “An Historical Survey of the Old Testament,” says that:
“It is not likely that the ‘apiru of the Amarna texts were the Israelites of the conquest narratives, for the conquest under Joshua preceded the earliest of the Amarna letters by twenty-five years… It is best, no doubt, to conclude that the initial conquest was largely completed before the Amarna period and that the Amarna texts refer to struggles that followed Israel’s unsuccessful attempts to subjugate and occupy Canaan. In that case, ‘apiru in those texts could refer to both Israel and to other, non-Hebrew peoples” (2nd edition, p. 106).
Merrill is indeed correct. Because of timing difficulties (the letters being from around the 1350s B.C. while the conquest under Joshua was around 1400), it seems that the Canaanites are not referring to Joshua’s initial conquest of Canaan. This leads Bryant G. Wood PhD, in his article, “From Ramesses to Shiloh: Archaeological Discoveries Bearing on the Exodus-Judges Period,” to say that the Amarna letters may have been describing the conquests which took place afterwards, early in the Judges period of Israel when “the [Israelite] tribes were engaged in consolidating their hold on their assigned allotments.” This would seem to correspond with what we read in Judges chapter 1:
“Then Judah said to Simeon his brother, “Come up with me into the territory allotted me, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I in turn will go with you into the territory allotted you.” So Simeon went with him. Judah went up, and the LORD gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hands, and they defeated ten thousand men at Bezek… Then the sons of Judah fought against Jerusalem and captured it and struck it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire. Afterward the sons of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites living in the hill country and in the Negev and in the lowland… Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites who were living in Gezer; so the Canaanites lived in Gezer among them” (Judges 1:3-4, 9, 29 NASB).
Archaeology is a tricky business. In many cases, it’s like having only a few dozen pieces of a puzzle that has over a thousand pieces in all. Archaeologists try to fill in the rest of the puzzle based on the few pieces they have collected. Sometimes, their attempts at discerning the rest of the puzzle seem more likely to be accurate than others. As Christians who believe in the Bible, we do our best to understand what archaeology can tell us about the world in which the Bible takes place. However, we, like the secularists, have our own framework. Many times secular archaeologists and historians assume from the beginning that the Bible is not trustworthy and will interpret data they encounter from that framework. Christians will likewise begin with the idea that the Bible is trustworthy, and the data we find is likely to confirm that concept in our minds.
In the case of the Amarna Tablets, those who deny the historicity of the Bible are likely to support a view that Israel did not wage a campaign into Canaan, and so the Amarna Tablets couldn’t possibly be a reference to Israel. Christians and Jews who take the Bible seriously find interesting parallels to the Amarna Tablets and the biblical accounts. New data could sway either side toward the conclusions of the other (that the Tablets are or are not referring to Israel). In the mean time, we must work with the information we have and come to the best conclusions that we can. If the Bible is truthful, the data which is irrefutable will support that, as it has consistently done in the past. Sir William Ramsay was a pre-eminent archaeologist who moved from an anti-biblical bias to accepting the biblical account as one that was highly trustworthy due to an over-whelming wealth of evidence in favor of the Bible’s reliability:
“I may fairly claim to have entered on this investigation without prejudice in favour of the conclusions which I shall now seek to justify to the reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind unfavourable to it [the historicity of the biblical book of Acts], for the ingenuity and apparent completeness of the Tübingen theory had at one time quite convinced me. It did not then lie in my line of life to investigate the subject minutely, but more recently I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning with a fixed idea that the work was essentially a second century composition, and never relying on its evidence as trustworthy for first century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investigations” (William Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, 36). Let us open our mind as well to the truthfulness of the Bible.